ROH in Chicago, Ill.
Report by Dot Net reader Jason Detrick

Pre-show: Rhett Titus & Danny Daniels defeated Trik Davis & Ernie Osiris. Titus wrestled the whole match wearing a white bow tie.

1. Austin Aries defeated Silas Young. It was pretty apparent this was a very large and very hot crowd early on. Austin was very over and everything in the match was crisp. Aries hit all his signature moves and picked up the win with the Horns of Aries submission.

Afterwards, Jimmy Jacobs came out. He congratulated Aries on his win and said he's happy to have him as a part of the Age of the Fall. Regarding Lacey and Aries making out the previous night, Jacobs quotes the film Moulin Rouge! and says he's not a jealous man, but he doesn't like people touching his things. Not sure how many people picked up on the reference, but I thought it was hilarious because it's exactly the kind of movie you'd expect Jimmy to be a fan of.

Aries made like he was acknowledging that he had joined AotF but then said that he and Lacey did a lot of "non-verbal communication" that night, and that Jimmy is something that Aries ate a lot of that night. I won't say what Aries then called Jimmy. Aries said he never for a second even considered joining AotF and now Lacey was out of AotF and with him. Jimmy was quite upset by this. Great segment as both guys were great on the mic and the audience was hanging on Austin's every word.

2 Necro Butcher defeated "Sugarfoot" Alex Payne & Mitch Franklin. This started as a match between the students until Necro came out and beat the crap out of both of them with very stiff jabs to the jaw and chair shots. He pinned both at the same time after hitting a chokeslam onto a chair. Both students bladed. After the match, Necro yelled into the camera that that was an example of what he was going to do to Morishima on the Hammerstein Ballroom show. I'm not so sure he's going to be chokeslamming Morishima.

3. Claudio Castagnoli & Pelle Primeau defeated Brent Albright & Adam Pearce (w/ Shane Hagadorn & Larry Sweeney). Pearce and Albright dominated Pelle (who had a much improved look, wearing long black shorts and having blue tinted hair). Albright destroyed Pelle's back with slaps. His back was almost bloodied from the blows. Claudio finally got the hot tag and cleaned house. The finish saw Pearce accidentally hit Albright with some sort of man-purse and Claudio getting the pin. Albright left in a huff with Pearce tried to calm him down, planting more seeds for Albright to break away from the group.

4. MsChif defeated Ashley Lane, Daizee Haze, and Lacey. Lane was sporting some new implants, which Lacey yelled for MsChif to pop. The match started out slow and Lane did not help her cause tonight with some awkward exchanges including a lucha armdrag spot that she totally missed on but sold anyway. Not long after, Lacey appeared to plant her foot wrong on an irish whip and went down. It really looked like she hurt her leg as she immediately crawled to the corner and tagged out.

Things settled down into a good four-way match after a while after Lane settled down and got more comfortable. MsChif really got over after hitting some nice maneuvers including a dive. Haze hit her heart punch/dropkick sequence but couldn't capitalize. Haze hit her head hard on the metal barricade on a bump of the apron. As Haze and Lacey were fighting on the outside, MsChif hit the Desecrater on Lane for the win.

After the match, Jimmy Jacobs came out again. Interestingly, he and MsChif exchanged glances and he held the ropes open for her to leave. In a way reminiscent of the beginning of the Colt Cabana/Jacobs/Lacey program from 2006, Jimmy asks Lacey to set his mind at ease and tell him that what Aries is saying isn't true. Lacey has a hard time looking at Jimmy in the eyes. She says she didn't want to do this in public but she said they need to go their separate ways.

Jimmy's face falls as Lacey backs up the ramp near tears repeatedly saying she's sorry. Jimmy looked devastated in the ring and the crowd mockingly said "Awww" and then chanted "Cry, Jimmy, cry!". After a good minute, Jacobs fell to his knees and wept. The crowd loved it and threw streamers. Jacobs was inconsolable. Joey Matthews, Tyler Black, and Allison Wonderland of Age of the Fall came out to try to get him out of the ring but he swatted them all away. Tyler was great here as he had a look on his face like "come on, you're embarrassing us."

5. Chris Hero (w/ Larry Sweeney and Bobby Dempsey) defeated Delirious. I liked Chris Hero a lot better when he was an obnoxious goofy heel. Now he is playing a straight heel and it's not as entertaining. It will probably be a more effective direction for him in the long run, but for tonight the crowd was hoping for a different side of Hero and seemed to be let down. At one point Delirious licked his hand and shoved it into Sweeney's face.

Sweeney freaks out about it and slaps Dempsey and orders Dempsey to go under the ring for the rest of the match, which he did. The match was fine but nothing much stands out. At one point, Delirious yelled "Daizee Haze!" and hit Haze's heart punch maneuver, so it looks like the Haze/Delirious connection continues, which will hopefully culminate in a one-night return of She-lirious. The finish fell quite flat as Hero defeated Delirious with either a forearm strike or an elbow strike and the ref counted to 3 in silence.

6. The Murder City Machine Guns defeated the Briscoes. This was a very good match, but if compared with the match from one year earlier it would fall a bit short. The tag titles not being on the line hurt some of the near falls and kind of gave away who was winning. The Machine Guns had some nice looking green and black tights. Some very good double team moves from both teams.

There were some great spots, though some of them felt contrived. For example, Mark Briscoe laid perfectly still for what felt like an eternity waiting to get splashed while Jay and the MCMG set up the move that was to land on Mark. I think this match will come off much better on DVD than live, actually. It was still really good, but not the elite MOTYC that the previous years match was. I got the feeling that they were holding a lot back in this one because a third and final match for the tag titles may be coming soon perhaps on the Hammerstein show but this is just speculation. After the match, Shelley motioned with his fingers that it is now Briscoes 1 - MCMG 1.

After the match, an enraged Jimmy Jacobs ran out with Age of the Fall and started carving up Mark Briscoe with the railroad spike.

7. Kota Iibushi (w/Michael Nakazawa) defeated El Generico. The first few minutes of this match were painfully slow. Kinda dull stuff to start the match, especially for being the first match back from intermission. However, once they got going, holy crap was it good. Some awesome kicks from Iibushi, and his trademark moves are insane. I'm not even sure how to describe some of them, but for the majority of the crowd who had never seen Iibushi's moves before, they just about blew the roof off the Frontier Fieldhouse with how amazed they were. Generico teased hitting the top turnbuckle brainbuster, but couldn't hit it. A beautiful phoenix splash ended Generico's night. "Please come back" was the chant, and it would be ridiculous for him not to be brought back after the rave reviews and crowd reactions from his four show tour of ROH.

8. The Age of the Fall (Tyler Black, Joey Matthews, and Zach Gowan w/Allison Wonderland) defeated The Vulture Squad (Jack Evans, Ruckus, and Jigsaw). Jimmy Jacobs was advertised for the match and I was very disappointed to see Gowan take his place. No explanation was given for the change, but storyline wise I would think it would be because Jacobs is too emotionally distraught to wrestle. Tyler Black wins it with a Small Package Driver. Not a whole lot to this match. Losing to the Age of the Fall B-team makes the Vulture Squad look a bit weak.

After both teams went to the back, Jimmy Jacobs comes out for a third time and says he's got to settle things with Austin Aries man-to-man. Aries comes out and they fight. When Aries gets the upper hand the Age of the Fall comes out. Aries fights them all off until they overwhelm him. They hold Aries down and tilt his head back, exposing his neck. Jacobs motions that he is going to cut Aries throat with the railroad spike. Lacey runs down to the ring and gets down on her knees and begs Jacobs not to do it. Jacobs momentarily loses it and grabs Lacey by the hair and threatens to spike her. However, he can't do it and he drops the spike and begins to cry again. The AotF leave and Lacey and Aries embrace.

9. ROH World Champion Nigel McGuinness defeated Kevin Steen. As Nigel was doing his ass-in-the-air ring entrance, Kevin punted him very hard in the balls. The crowd had somewhat burnt themselves out for this match after being so hot all night long. They still booed Nigel and cheered on Steen, though. Steen was using dirty tactics, such as biting Nigel's chest and trying to pin Nigel with his feet on the ropes. Nigel kicked out of the Package Piledriver. Steen tried for a Package Piledriver off the apron through a table but ended up going through the table himself. Steen kicked out of many lariats. When Steen heard anyone with a high-pitched voice cheer for Nigel, he either yelled at them or gave them a disgusted look. It's good to see Steen hasn't lost his edge since turning face. In the end, Steen fell victim to the jawbreaker lariat.

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